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738 Q Quimbois guadelouPe and MartiniQue In Martinique and Guadeloupe, Quimbois is a popular religious manifestation in which sets of magical, spiritual, and Roman Catholic practices are interwoven. Any discussion of this phenomenon calls for the examination of a certain number of sociohistorical elements.The heavy heritage left by the slave trade and its many ideological ramifications cannot be stressed enough: the territorial expansion of France and the growth of wealth in the metropole created through the enslavement of Africans and in the name of their evangelization , the ethnocentric discourses of Europeans that demonized and marginalized the cultural practices of Africans (see African Caribbean Religions), and a policy of silencing and assimilation carried out in the aftermath of the abolition of slavery in 1848. Looking at the question from another angle, it is important to remember the armed resistance to the oppressor and the underground action against the ruling system . It is also important to emphasize that slaves reinvented in their new world a religious expression that no subsequent ideology or policy would ever manage to totally eliminate. These elements are determining factors in our understanding of the nature of religious manifestations in Martinique and Guadeloupe, the social discourse that developed around them, and the specificity of a local literature that brings those religious traditions together again. The power of the quimboiseur or quimboiseuse (male and female Quimbois practitioners) to do good and evil has never ceased haunting the collective subconscious in Martinique and Guadeloupe. With Philippe Delisle (1996), I consider the Quimbois phenomenon in Martinique and Guadeloupe to be Creole since it has grown out of the brutal contact of peoples of different religious origins and spiritual mentalities . Through the use of the term “Creole” I refer to the complex processes of symbiosis (Desmangles 1992, Curtius 2006) and intersemiotics (Case 2001) that help us to understand the heterogeneous specificity of this cultural phenomenon and its relationship to both Catholicism (see Roman Catholic Church) and African spiritual traditions. One of the etymological origins of the word “Quimbois” is quite pertinent when talking of the creolized characteristics of the French Caribbean religious phenomenon. According to Geneviève Leti (2000), Father Labat is said to have cured a dying slave by giving him a potion prepared with several leaves and saying “tiens bois [here drink].” The slaves were convinced that the initiative of Father Labat came from a magical practice, which they later on called tiens bois. Over time a language twist has therefore given the word “Quimbois .” However, the origin of the word could also be xikuembo , “a name of Guinean origin designating something that cannot be described, the source of the most varied misfortunes ” (Boutrin 1976, quoted in Leti 2000, 143). When considering the heterogeneous nature of Quimbois ’s symbiosis of magical, spiritual, and Catholic practices , the notions of spirituality and magic, good and evil, and sacred and profane must enter into a dynamic duality. It is precisely in this double perspective that the specificities of the phenomenon must be studied. In the social discourse of Martinique and Guadeloupe, the term “Quimbois” produces various reactions. Indeed, a person may speak of anguish caused by an attack of Quimbois and of the hope for a cure but also of disbelief when not confronted with the phenomenon . In other words, to speak of Quimbois is to evoke evil and wickedness being done and the need for an appropriate therapy, leading to a process of healing. To speak of Quimbois also entails adopting an ambivalent discourse in which one indicates that the practice does not exist but that there are certain reasons why the patient believes that it is effective . The strong hold of Christianity on everyday life and the condemnation of Quimbois practices by Catholic and Protestant churches (see Protestantism) can explain this ambivalent discourse. In everyday social discourse the term “Quimbois” means evil and anguish. But there must also be awareness of the inadequacy of a terminology that would designate a magical system based only on the practice of evil and would ignore the dynamics of healing and spirituality. The terms referring to quimboiseurs who practice good are many. Some, such as gadèdzafès (fixer-men and women in Caribbean English), séanciers and séancières (see-far-men and women), and dormeuses (female healers who perform their ritual of talking to their client while in a state of apparent lethargy), are said to operate in the sphere of good. When it comes to those who operate in the...
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